Fun fact: Viking funeral pyres don't actually get hot enough to turn the body into ash like in cremation. That's why you can't have a Viking funeral nowadays. Nobody wants to scrape your dead body off of the family friendly beach at the local lake.

Oh, no. Stoick's really gone too far this time. Grief does strange things to everyone. Since Stoick is normally such a levelheaded and rational person (who doesn't really focus on feelings or emotions as much as the necessary actions) it makes sense that this is one way that he could react.

If he was right in the head he'd realize that his hatred of dragons is what really started the fight that Hiccup was eventually killed in. Of course, he's not to blame since war is a double edged sword.

Excellent work with this once again. I can definitely see the plot emerging here (and for better or for worse Stoick is the main source of the conflict at the moment).

It's really ironic how tragedy brings out the best and the worst in everyone. In Stoick, it brings his snap-action faults to the surface causing him to react rashly and with Astrid it brings out her sensitive nature a lot more. I like how you've played that out.

There are still a few typos and tiny errors around, so you might want to run spell-check to clean up the little things. Trust me, it does wonders for your stories to get the little things (I know I like to focus on the story so I like to clean up the minor errors up before then so I don't drive myself nuts).

You're doing great with this and I'm again impressed that you've managed to pace this and not go into those circles of "Oh, I'm sad, let's be sad together" kind of fics. This is quite the story.